I have found something, a time waster maybe, but this youtube channel has brought some enjoyment into my life, especially while washing dishes or doing certain other manual tasks that sometimes come into my life.
The Kill Pete Strategy, and his second channel Free Pete, is a guy from Canada who, during the pandemic, rose to become the top Risk Streamer, Risk Grandmaster and all around cool dude streaming and uploading his risk games to twitch and youtube.
Some of the games are 30 minutes or less, some go long, such as this one that I found this morning. Hours long videos like this might take me several sessions to get through, although I often just leave it on in the background as ambient noise while doing other tasks, such as writing this post.
I played Risk as a child, with my family, so I am somewhat familiar with the rules. There are a few different modes, capitals for example were new to me, but fixed vs. progressive cards, plus a multitude of maps to play with. Suffice it to say, learning to play the game is only part of the fun.
For me, its more than just learning to play risk, as I will most likely never play this online version (more on that later), and may only play a few more rounds over the table in the rest of my life. But I do enjoy the game theory, which I will talk about in the next section.
But important to mention, that this Pete character, is an interesting guy - he is the founder of a philosophy forum and integrates Q+A from his discord into his streams, often answering questions about life, the universe and everything. Mixed in with the game theory about playing with other people amidst imperfect information, I have found this channel fascinating.
Also, he always plays to win, and never quits, even when down to 1 troop, by not giving up he can often come back to win the game.
Here is my favorite playlist, the Europe Advanced Progressive Capitals Meta settings. The interesting part of these settings, on a particularily big map, is the fog without alliances, so you are always dealing with imperfect information.
Despite this, Pete often shows how to use what information you do have, like the troops each player is getting each turn, to understand what is going on in the parts of the board you cannot see. He is a master of this, and I have learned a lot.
In the game, you can only communicate with other players through the use of emojis and a few simple phrases. Pete manages to show, through his action and sometimes using emojis, how to negotiate with other players. Figuring out what they want and giving it to them, he makes 'friends' which he often rewards by bringing them along to a second place finish, right behind him. The video above is a great example of this.
Of course he also figures out who isn't negotiable, the 'bad neighbor' and pounds them into dust, even sacrificing his own game occasionally to make sure that such bullying behavior is not rewarded. Its a fascinating balance.
Another crucial thing of interest on this channel, is Pete's 'fight' with the developers of the game. He has identified several problems, and easy solutions for them (I would call this low hanging fruit), but has mostly been ignored by the developers - who don't really spend any money updating their game and are likely just happy to collect the paycheck and leave the game unchanged.
Early in his youtube career, Pete managed to stage a revolt around a particular issue, getting hundreds of players to change their ingame names to some version "FIX THIS PROBLEM", and the problem actually got fixed. But due to the energy involved, Pete has since settled back and said that the company could hire him as a consultant when and if they became serious about making their game better.
This fascinating saga, watching users fight with a stagnant developement company, I find near and dear to my heart, and speaks to another level of game theory taking place.
All in all, I have learned a lot from watching Kill Pete, and until I run out of videos I will probably keep leaving some version of this on while I watch the dishes.